


Here There Be Dragons

by DarkrystalSky



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Everyone is dragons, Gen, Mention Of Genocide, kind of a collab, lots of lore, mass scale extinction event
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:21:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14068824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkrystalSky/pseuds/DarkrystalSky
Summary: Here there be Dragons, they used to say of that country.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Glint](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14049678) by [Weevilo707](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weevilo707/pseuds/Weevilo707). 



Their best minds struggled to comprehend the exact causes of The Purge.   
When the xiekivi woke up from their Third Great Sleep on the islands and returned to the Great Continent, they found the land ravaged by the signs of a great war and only lower intelligence lifeforms survived. 3 billion people, a dozen races, each with their own culture and characteristics, extinct in the span of one Long Sleep, and suddenly the world seemed pointless to fight over. After centuries of wars over territories and hordes, there was no reason for the xiekivi to fight each other.

Some celebrated, enjoyed a land that was finally and only theirs. Some mourned, constructed graves and celebrated the final rituals for the humans, elves, gnomes and dwarves they had so admired before the Sleep. Some, especially those caring for their Young who hadn't seen the world as it was before, started telling their stories. Stories of war, love, of beautiful creative races and their little quirks. They kept their memories alive and taught the children to shapechange in forms they could only see in photographs and paintings.   
  
Conflicts ceased, their race thrived and their number multiplied, they assumed the shape of those who came before to live in the buildings and use their instruments, they advanced magitech to levels they never thought of before. It became commonplace for a darastrix to choose a smaller form upon reaching adulthood and stick to it through their life. The smaller forms taught them humility and gave them access to the infrastructures of the Fallen Races, other than reducing the amount of food needed: it was a better lifestyle than they ever got access to.   
  
_ Here there be Dragons, _ they used to say of that country.   
There wouldn't be a dragon in sight.

\---

When the xiekivi left the Great Continent to initiate their Third Great Sleep, they had no idea they wouldn’t see its lovely woods and rugged mountains ever again, that their hordes would be abandoned, that their young would never be born. A handful of sorcerers discovered the land where the xiekivi slept and hatched their Young. Armies followed by sea, killing hundreds in their sleep and returned to Faerun with their hands full of bloody mementos. After centuries of fear under their rule, there was no reason to hide anymore.

Some celebrated, enjoyed a land where there would be no more fear of flaming beasts in the night, plundered inhabited caverns full of gold, magical objects or weirder but still valuable collections. Some mourned the loss of a great race, built statues and created cults centered around the few who could still claim to have Their blood. Some, especially those who knew how the xiekivi liked the other races and mingled in their crowds under false shapes, started telling their stories, preserving their memories and hoping to see them soaring in the sky once again.

With the extinction of Dragons, the land thrived: fortresses became palaces and underground laboratories became research facilities. Magitech advanced to impossible levels and almost everyone got hold of a better lifestyle than they ever imagined.

_ Here there be Dragons, _ they used to say of that country.   
There wouldn't be a dragon in sight.


	2. The Hatching

The twins hatched from an egg covered in burnt moss and covered in leaves in the heat of the summer months, their tails twisted and coiled together, hearts humming in unison, scale as green as the lush vegetation around them and as red as the suns’ scorching rays.

The first truth they were aware of was: they were together and they were going to be forever.

The second truth they were aware of was: they were alone, the other eggs were broken shells, gooey liquid splattered around like somebody had willfully destroyed them and there was no adult presiding the nest.

They walked away, stumbling and half blind still, for no more than a few hours before an adult picked them up and asked whose nest they fell from. They didn’t know.

They told them they were twins, they didn’t believe them. The scales look different, Red and Green blood don’t mix, brothers don’t hatch from the same egg like they claimed to have.

They called them liars.

The third truth they were aware of was: they could only trust each other.

#

He hatched from an egg shining white like the snow that covered it, during the harshest months of winter. He emerged shivering, alone and confused, the darkness of the shell replaced by an unbearable whiteness all around. His cold blood freezing in the absence of external heat, as he stumbled away from the wrecked nest and the skeleton of an adult wrapped around it and covered in snow.

The first truth he was aware of was: he was alone, he was alive because he hatched late but everyone else was either a skeleton or a decomposing carcass.

The second truth he was aware of was: he was going to die soon, without the care of an adult. He knew the things he knew because of the ancestral memory of the xiekivi, but he didn’t know how to hunt for food nor where he was.

They were alone, hungry and on the verge of dying when a warm embrace took him off the ground. He wasn’t like him, that he knew, but he spoke kindly, he called him beautiful, he gave him food and heat and promised to protect him.

He gave him a name, he asked him to call him grandpa.

The third truth he was aware of was: he could trust him.


End file.
